Over the next two weeks, I realised that I might have made a mistake by asking for the simulations and manuals on the larger ship-types. Commodore Ryker seemed to enjoy putting me into a frigate or even a corvette, using simulated crew to fill in the gaps. While it was possible to pilot a frigate in combat without additional help, trying to do the same in a corvette would be almost impossible. Intellectually, I knew that the cross-training was a good thing, that it would be in my file as additional training, increasing my worth when it came to my duty-station and later promotions.
At the same time, I had noticed that in the last few simulations I had done in my Raptor, the large strides I had made earlier were slowly getting smaller as I was getting used to the inventive formations and tactics taught by the Carmines. My increased familiarity and ability allowed me to achieve a rank somewhere in the lower mid-field of the Squadron, a major achievement, not only in my but also in Commodore Ryker’s eyes. But to truly master them would simply take time, time, exposure to different enemies and tactics and effort from my end. I was certain I would achieve such mastery but not until I graduated the Academy, nevermind leaving the Merathorn. Actually, I felt that the exposure to different ship-types was helping me cross-reference the performance of my Raptor, letting me push it in inventive and unexpected ways.
Yes, with all that in mind, I still wanted to fly the Raptor, not a frigate or corvette.
We were only a week out of Celraph, where the cadets would leave the Merathorn to return to the Academy when my breakfast was interrupted by a call to General Quarters. Muttering a few, soft curses, I started to make my way to the bridge. If the alarm had come an hour later, I would have been on duty and could have taken my Starfighter out, now Ryan Trezt would get the privilege while I was sitting at a console on the bridge.
When I stepped onto the bridge, a tense silence reigned, making me afraid to even breathe too loudly. I gave a short salute to the Captain before taking up my duty-station, sitting next to an unknown Fleet-Lieutenant. Remembering the orientation, I first checked just where we were and what was going on. Finding the information was easy enough, it turned out we had just left hyperspace, in one of the most boring systems imaginable. A small, red dwarf, orbited by a couple rocky planets and asteroids, the stellar equivalent of a square room, painted eggshell. On a stellar level, there was nothing worth a second glance, no concentration of heavy elements that would make mining worthwhile, no gas-giants to mine volatiles, no water and certainly no life.
But today, there was something interesting, the reason for the alarm, a distress-call, coming from a freighter. The course was already set there and we were currently accelerating, so I decided that having emergency-escape routes was a good idea and started to plot potential courses away from here. Not that the hyperspace navigation was complicated, the few stellar objects had little in the way of mass, making their effect on hyperspace negligible. Still, it had to be done and was better than sitting here, bored out of my skull. Just the silence around me was getting on my nerves, as was the enforced inactivity. Sure, I could have pulled out a tablet, to get some reading or work done but doing so with the Captain sitting a few meters away, potentially looking over my shoulder? That sounded like a profoundly bad idea.
Looking at the course, I realised something else, we were still over an hour away from the contact, meaning that I had no idea whether I was supposed to stay on the bridge or switch to the Starfighter-Area, waiting on the order to deploy. Knowing that there were only two people who could answer that, the Captain sitting a few meter away from me and Commodore Ryker, I sent a message to Commodore Ryker. No way was I voluntarily speaking up on the bridge that was as silent as the void of space.
But just as I asked the question, I started to wonder, just how did they expect their arrangement to work? If there was an emergency, did they want me to potentially spend almost a full shift, depending when the emergency was, on the bridge before going on shift with my Starfighter? That sounded like a great way to assure I would perform at my least effective level in the cockpit but maybe they had thought about that - Or they might have just decided that it would work out somehow, without deeper consideration.
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Before I could sink deeper into that particular question, Commodore Ryker’s message told me that the shift in my Starfighter had priority. Quite grateful, I made sure that my calculations were saved in the system, ready to pull up if needed, softly told the official navigation-officer about it, before saluting the Captain again to take my leave.
Sadly, it was not to be and I was asked to explain myself before being dismissed, causing more sound on the bridge than I had heard before, an actual conversation that wasn’t whispered. The Captain frowned for a moment but at the end of the day, orders were orders and I was ordered to be in the Starfighter-area and that was where I would go. Without further words, he dismissed me and I fled the bridge as quick as I could, hoping never to return to the oppressively silent room.
When I got to the Starfighter-Area, I instantly felt relief, there was a soft hubbub going on, the technicians talking amongst each other and with their pilots, the pilots making sure that everything was as it should be, I didn’t have to constantly watch out not to breathe too loudly for fear of disturbing the grave-like silence.
Commodore Ryker must have spotted me, as he called me over, into the briefing-room.
“Cadet Horn, can you tell us more about the situation?” he asked, using the correct form of address as Commodore Ming was present as well.
“Yes, Sir, Ma’am. The Merathorn received a distress-signal, apparently there’s a freighter in technical distress. It might be a trap, which is why the Captain brought us to general quarters, just in case.” I reported, causing the two of them to nod in understanding.
“Thank you, Cadet. Take a seat, we will brief the Squadron in a minute.” Commodore Ming told me, typing on her tablet to pull up additional information from the bridge. It was one of those cases that the information were available but what conclusions the bridge had drawn from them was the question.
With the very limited information she had, Commodore Ming briefed the entire squadron, before laying out that Groups 3 and 4 would take the lead, while Groups 1 and 2 would remain on the Merathorn, standing by to reinforce. Mostly because Groups 1 and 2 had been of shift and were one Starfighter down, reducing their combat-efficiency by quite a bit. Hopefully, the measures they were taking were just superfluous but nobody really knew, that was the problem with potential traps, you might not see one until it was sprung on you.
The briefing was dismissed and I walked over to my Starfighter, making sure that the settings were as I liked them, now that I was sharing it with Cadet Trezt that wasn’t necessarily the case. Luckily, the technicians were very good and had saved the settings used by either of us, applying the template whenever we switched off. But I still wanted to check and verify that they were as they should be, especially if there might be a combat-sortie. Once that was done, I strapped in and the technicians transferred me and my Starfighter into the launch-tube, alongside the rest of Carmine Group 3.
Sitting in the fighter gave me access to additional information from the bridge and I realised that the distress-call was an automated signal, which explained the lack of clarifying information. Additionally, the freighter had been drifting on a ballistic course since we got it in sight, making me wonder what was going on aboard.
Some time later, about half an hour away from the drifting freighter, we were ordered to launch and quickly formed a protective screen around the Merathorn, adding our sensors to the look-out for trouble.
“Keep an eye out. The Captain will most likely sent the shuttle over, with a team of marines and technicians, to find out what is going on. If it is an ambush, it will be sprung a minute or two after the shuttle is docked there, giving them just enough time to disembark and spread out a little, so they can’t simply return. That way, the Captain would have to choose between abandoning our people or fighting a potentially pitched battle. Neither sounds good, so keep your eyes peeled, if there are hostiles out here, I want to shove their trap down their throats before they can spring it.” Commodore Ryker ordered, even going so far to abandon the usual pair-formation, to get more coverage.
Once again, I was sitting in the dark, all alone, no other human within a few thousand kilometers. It was a wonderfully peaceful feeling, even if I knew it was unlikely to last.